The Lemon Information System (LIS)
14th June 2006
What is LIS?
LIS is the Lemon Information System. It is an application we designed in-house to track 'jobs' (requests for Lemon to do something for a client).
Why?
We found that as Lemon expanded, it became difficult to keep track of jobs. To provide a professional and efficient service to clients it is important that we not only know what we are currently working on, but also what we've done in the past. In this way, we can prioritise requests from clients.
When?
The first phase of LIS was launched on the 1st March 2006, when [???]. The next phase occured in the summer of 2006, and included a provision that enables us to provide our clients with summaries of outstanding jobs.
What does it mean for me?
The most notable change to you will be that we now insist on a reference number for each conversation with an engineer. We ask our admin staff to create a reference if you don't have one. If you call with regards to an existing job request, having it's reference number handy, to give to the operator, will save you time.
Our staff "attaches" the reference number to the phonecall and this means, when the engineer picks up the phone, his screen will automatically display the notes and history for this job. It's designed to save time and money.
We can provide you with weekly summaries of work that we have done, intend to do, and cannot do, because we're waiting for something to happen. If this is the case, the summary will make it clear.
We hope to make our timesheets more understandable to clients by adding the description of the job to the note. So rather than saying;
"We unblocked syn packets on port 25"
we will say:
"As part of your request 'my email doesn't work' we took the following action: "We unblocked syn packets on port 25". The job is now completed."
We expect that this system will make it easier to repair faults and spot recurring problems so that we can apply a permanent fix. This in turn leaves us with spare time to do exciting high-tech stuff which will give you extra features, without breaking your budget. We will also include requests made via emails on our Jobsheets.
How do support emails work?
... Now for the techy bit...
When you send an email to support@lemon-computing.com
the email will be read and saved into our database. We then match the sender of the email against our database, to determine the company and person who sent it.
Occassionally this is not possible and the email will be held for human intervention. LIS then checks whether the email was sent to support@lemon-computing.com or lisXXX@lemon-computing.com.
If it was sent to support it will create a new job request. If it was sent to lisXXX, LIS will consider it a reply to an email it sent out. XXX is the unique number of the email so LIS can match it back to the note and thus the job request.
The email is then attached, as a note, to this job request. Occassionally LIS gets an email from a sender other than the original sender of the job request. LIS holds those emails for human intervention so that we can check that this really is alright.
Simple huh?...
How do support phone calls work?
We created a phone system (we call it LemonPBX) which is built entirely upon VoIP technology. VoIP allows us to integrate the phone system seamlessly into our computers. So, when we answer a telephone call, LIS displays a screen and asks the caller for the company name and persons' name.
This then gets attached to the call in real-time. Anyone else who picks up the same call thereafter will be presented with a screen that displays the notes for this call.
To save time and money, we'll associate the number you're calling from with your account, so that next time you call from the same number, it will display your details straight away without having to ask you to specify it.
Can I speak to an engineer directly?
Yes, certainly. We only ask that you give us your job request reference number to whomever answers your call. In this way, we can supply the information about your problem to the engineer as quickly as possible.
If your call is about a new problem, we will create a new job request for you (it doesn't take too long... honest), and give you a reference number for the new job. In this way, we can accurately track who is working on what, when, and how.
I don't like it! Do I have to use it?
Try it. It's really good and saves you money! We consider it 'cowboy' style to blindly work on clients' networks without applying scientific methods. One of the key requirements of a scientific approach is to clearly log any changes that were applied and the result of each change. Whilst we are aware that this 'style' is common in the industry, we do not advocate such irresponsibility.
We do however understand that some of our clients don't even have networks or a need to manage their equipment, because they have very little. For those clients we will soon be creating a brand new department in Lemon Computing. More details on this soon.
